>From the early sixteenth century, when Vasco Núñez de Balboa sighted thePacific and Fernáo de Magalháes (Magellan) gave the ocean its sublime name,it has been less a region of peace and stability and more an arena of war.Taking a broad view of the Pacific, with particular emphasis on the longtwentieth-century, this seminar inquires into the violent underside of thelong history of imperialist imaginings of the Pacific.

Described in lush, munificent, and seemingly benign terms as a site oftranquility, openness, and abundance by successive imperialist regimes, thePacific, as a region, has been shaped by the violence of war, militarism,revolution, and resistance. "Pacific," "Silk Road," "Open Door," "GreaterEast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," "Shangri-La," "American Lake": all of thesedesignations conjure forth ideas of the region and its localities inaesthetized political language imposed from without as well as fromwithin—language which obscures the brute asymmetry of power relations thathave historically riven the region. This seminar seeks not so much tore-describe the history of imposed representation vis-à-vis the Pacific asit aims to unearth that which hovers just beneath: namely, the militarism,geopolitics, and colonialism that have repeatedly reconfigured the region.

Within the long twentieth century alone, the Pacific has been a site ofcontesting, frequently overlapping imperialisms and successive wars: theSpanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Asia-Pacific War, theKorean War, the Vietnam War, and the "secret" war in Cambodia and Laos. Thearena where the U.S. and Japan laid grand imperial designs, thereby enablingtheir simultaneous emergence as sovereign powers on the world stage, thePacific has historically been host to competing geopolitical forays byimperial actors, including Spain, France, Great Britain, Holland, Russia,the U.S., and Japan. This seminar asks the question: how has this historyof serial wars, serial colonialisms, and serial militarisms in the Pacificmade its imprint on cultural production? This seminar solicits papers thataddress this question from perspectives both large-scale and micro: forexample, the "Pacific" as a region and specific localities within thePacific, war, colonialism, and militarism and their epiphenomena. In thespirit of "Trans, Pan, and Intra," we encourage papers that highlight anumber of sites within and along the "rim" of the Pacific, from a range ofdisciplinary positions—particularly those that combine area studies andAsian American studies.

With the Pacific framing in mind, you are encouraged to submit papers thatspeak to but are certainly not limited to the following possible topics: